No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [39]
“Well, that’s very thoughtful,” I said. “Maybe sometime.” Thinking to myself, Not a chance.
“Anyway,” Lauren said, her eyebrows bobbing up for a second. “You going to the Post Mall tonight? They’re having some of the stars from the latest Survivor, signing autographs.”
“I had no idea,” I said.
“I’m going,” she said.
“I’ll have to pass. Cynthia and I, we have to go into New Haven. It’s about the TV show. No big deal. Just a follow-up.”
I immediately regretted telling her. She brightened and said, “You’ll have to tell me all about it tomorrow.”
I just smiled, said I had to get to class, and once I was away from her gave my head an invisible shake.
We had dinner early to give us time to drive in to the Fox affiliate in New Haven, and had intended to get a sitter for Grace, but Cynthia said she had called around and been unable to get any of our regulars.
“I could stay home on my own,” Grace said as we were getting ready to go. Grace had never stayed home on her own, and we certainly weren’t going to make this her first night for going solo. Maybe in five or six years.
“No way, pal,” I said. “Bring your Cosmos book or some homework or something else to do while we’re there.”
“Can’t I hear what the lady says?” Grace said.
“No,” Cynthia said, before I could say the same thing.
Cynthia was edgy through dinner. I’d gotten over being pissed off, so it wasn’t my doing. I attributed it to anxiety over what the psychic would have to say. Having someone read your palm, tell your fortune, lay out some Tarot cards on a table before you, it could be entertaining, even when you didn’t believe it. That was under normal circumstances. This was going to be different.
“They want me to bring one of the shoeboxes,” Cynthia said.
“Which one?”
“Any. She says she just needs to hold it, maybe hold some of the things inside, to pick up more vibrations or whatever about the past.”
“Sure,” I said. “And they’re going to be filming all this, I suppose.”
Cynthia said, “I don’t see how we can tell them not to. It was their story that brought this woman forward. They’re going to want to follow it through.”
“Do we even know who she is?” I asked.
“Keisha,” Cynthia said. “Keisha Ceylon.”
“Really.”
“I looked her up on the Internet,” Cynthia said, then added, “She has a webpage.”
“I’ll just bet she does,” I said, and gave her a rueful smile.
“Be nice,” Cynthia said.
We were all in the car, backing out of the drive, when Cynthia said, “Hold it! I can’t believe it. I forgot the shoebox.”
She had taken from the closet one of her boxes of family mementos and left it on the kitchen table so she wouldn’t forget.
“I’ll go get it,” I said, putting the car in park.
But Cynthia already had her keys out of her purse, the car door open. “I’ll just be a second,” she said. I watched her go up the walk, unlock the house, and run inside, the keys left dangling from the lock. She seemed to be in there for a while, longer than it would take to grab the shoebox, but then she reappeared, shoebox tucked under her arm. She locked up, took the keys out of the door, got back in the car.
“What took so long?” I asked.
“I took an Advil,” she said. “My head’s pounding.”
At the station, we were met at reception by the ponytailed producer, who led us into a studio and to a talk-show set with a couch, a couple of chairs, some fake plants, some cheesy background latticework. Paula Malloy was there, and she greeted Cynthia like an old friend, oozing charm like a runny sore. Cynthia was reserved. Standing next to Paula was a black woman, late forties I guessed, dressed impeccably in a navy blue suit. I wondered if she was another producer, maybe a station manager.
“I’d like to introduce you to Keisha Ceylon,” Paula said.
I guess I was expecting someone who looked like a gypsy or something. A flower child, maybe. Someone in a floor-length tie-dyed skirt, not someone who looked like